


Liquid Time

by Enednoviel



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-10
Updated: 2010-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enednoviel/pseuds/Enednoviel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch is musing about time. Sweet Revenge fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liquid Time

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Molo for the beta!

_Never thought  
This day would come so soon  
We had no time to say goodbye  
How can the world just carry on?  
I feel so lost when you are not at my side  
But there is nothing but silence now  
Around the one I loved  
Is this our farewell?_

Our Farewell - Within Temptation

Time is a strange thing.

I swear it can change its consistency at its own will. Or maybe there is really some kind of wacky Chronos figure out there somewhere who likes to play around and fuck with our lives. Who knows?

Fact is, when things are going well, when you’re happy, time is as thin and fleeting as the air around you. You want to hold on to it, grab for it, but you always come up with empty hands. When you’re unhappy or waiting for something, time turns into a viscous liquid, and it makes you feel like a fly that got stuck in a mass of thick syrup.

Sometimes it even feels that time comes to halt and stops along with everything else.

It was that way when you kissed me for the first time, sealing the new level of our relationship with your lips pressing upon mine. For a moment I thought my heart would stop and I froze. But then, seconds later, time resumed its relentless march. Oh God, it felt so good. We'd wasted so much time before that, we had a lot to make up for. The moment of our first touch went far deeper than anything we ever had before, passing too soon, the fleeting moment feeling like the air in a summer garden, all lavender and roses.

Lavender and roses? Cripes, would you listen to me? If you could hear me, you’d laugh your head off. At my expense, of course.

Well, I wouldn’t mind that at all--you laughing about me. Right now I’d give anything just to hear you laugh again. Call me a mushball, but I miss your laughter. Your infectious smile that always makes me want to grin back like a loon. The smile you always reserved for me.

Happy times like those are like a drug. Being so close to you made me high and dizzy, but in a good way. Not like that shit Forest’s henchmen pumped into my veins. It’s been a while since I've felt so alive. I only wish we had had more time than just a few weeks.

Time can be merciless, too.

Goddamn, I hate that nurse. She pretends to read, but I guess she thinks I’m nuts.

My throat and my eyes hurt. I have to wash my face.

Now, where was I?

When time stops, it can be a good or a bad thing. Being kissed by you for the first time was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It felt so damn good, so _right_.

Tell you what, Starsk. It didn’t feel so good when you died on me. And I wasn’t there with you. Dobey didn’t have to say anything, I knew. I guess I broke every speed record that day, desperately trying to get to you, but I couldn’t shake that gut feeling that I might be too late. I think I’ve never felt so sick. Much worse was that malicious voice in my head.

_There’s not enough time. You’re too late, sucker._

When I burst through the doors and you came back to me, time marched on again. Still in its nasty liquid form, but you take what you get, buddy.

Ever since you got shot I started measuring time in drops rather than seconds or minutes.

The drops (or should I say streams?) of your blood running down on the pavement. I remember thinking what a waste that was. Your precious life spreading out on the ground, rejected by the concrete and pooling underneath your jerking body. I couldn’t help thinking about the waste of it. It’s that part of your brain that wants to break out in hysterics and run away screaming when it is confronted with a situation like that. Your partner--no, the most important person in your life--dying in your arms. I remember I was trying to catch the warm and sticky liquid with my bare hands as it was gushing out of your wounds with every pumping heartbeat. I was unable to stop it, feeling utterly helpless. At that point, Chronos probably thought it was hysterically funny to stretch out time to what felt like an eternity until the ambulance finally arrived.

Right now the consistent dripping of the IV measures the passing time for me, while I’m waiting for you to wake up, to return to me. It feels like being under water for too long. I feel like I’m drowning. I wish I could come up to the surface and breathe again, but I can’t leave you behind.

Maybe we should invent new clocks for times like these. Water clocks. More appropriate.

Hey, didn’t they use water clocks in ancient times? That would make a fancy wrist watch for you, Starsk, don’t you think?

I have to bite my tongue, and I’m tasting blood, because it’s hard not to laugh out loud at the thought. I guess if I laughed now it would come out as a very hysterical giggle. The kind of laughter that can only be stopped with a brutal slap in the face. A water wrist watch. Where did that idea come from? I think I’m finally losing it. Not that it matters. I’m not alone, but I guess that nurse has given up on my sanity anyway.

Water clocks. What a hoot.

Well, hourglasses are kinda cool. My mom used to have one of these, a real big and fancy one with ornaments. Our housekeeper hated my mom’s weird stuff, because it was a pain in the ass to dust and clean all those trinkets. I loved the hourglass though. The fine trickle of sand always had a soothing effect on me, and I could have watched it for hours and hours, forgetting everything around me.

Then again, hourglasses aren’t so cool when they represent your life span. According to the doctors the upper half of your personal hourglass is pretty much empty. In fact, you should've run out of sand by now.

Starsky, I have to say that I don’t like the image of your hourglass being held by a shrouded figure with a bony hand. Because I’m waiting for the figure to tell me something I don’t want to hear. I’m not ready for this.

_It’s time._

It makes my blood run cold and I’m shivering despite the warmth in this room.

No. It can’t be. Not yet. We had so little time. I mean... together. There is so much I have to say to you, there is so much we can do, what we _have_ to do. No more wasting precious time from now on, do you hear me?

Then someone turns the hourglass upside down and you open your eyes, trying to smile at me.

And time resumes its normal pace.

FIN


End file.
